Leading scholar, influential theorist chosen to lead Chao Center

Leading scholar, influential theorist chosen to lead Chao Center
Professor Tani Barlow named as founding director

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

Rice University has named noted Asia scholar Tani Barlow to be the founding director of the T.T. and W.F. Chao Center for Asian Studies, university officials announced today.  Hired after an international search, Barlow will also serve as the T.T. and W.F. Chao Professor of Asian History.

A leading scholar of modern Chinese history and a critical theorist, Barlow comes to Rice from the University of Washington, where she was a professor of history and women’s studies. She served for several years as that university’s director of the Project for Critical Asian Studies.

	TANI BARLOW

“Professor Barlow’s international reputation as an accomplished historian and Asia scholar will help us achieve many of our international goals,” Rice President David Leebron said. “Under her engaging leadership style, the Chao Center will strengthen Rice’s interdisciplinary research and build collaborative ties both internally and externally.”

Barlow is the founding senior editor of “positions: east asia cultures critique,” one of the world’s leading interdisciplinary journals on Asia. The publication received the prestigious 2005 Best New Journal Award by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals of the Modern Language Association. The journal’s editorial office will move with her to Rice.

“The Chao Center presents a wonderful opportunity for me to collaborate with scholars and researchers around the world, the remarkable faculty at Rice and other experts in Houston,” Barlow said. “Asia is multiple. Asia is not just China, Japan, Korea, India, but also Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and all the other people of a huge continent, with their histories, energy and labor power. Asia can no longer be an ‘other,’ an object of curiosity that we study.”

As the director of the Chao Center, Barlow will spearhead the center’s efforts to distinguish itself with a transnational focus, which emphasizes how people, ideas, products and technologies travel across national and other boundaries.

“The Chao Center will focus our study on the synergistic flow of political, economic and cultural forces in and out of Asia,” Barlow said. “In the 21st century, Asia will deeply affect people in the U.S. and the rest of the world. Its consumer goods have already lowered our cost of living. Its growing domestic needs have heightened the global competition for raw materials and energy. Its economic dynamics have reconfigured geopolitics and put into question the West’s long-held assumption about the relation of democracy and capitalism.” 

Barlow said she hopes that the center will foster a research environment in which faculty and students feel welcome to explore with one another, take on projects and produce and present research.

Barlow will also be charged with fostering scholarly collaboration across disciplines. The Chao Center brings together historians, linguists, literary scholars, economists, scientists, engineers, political scientists and policymakers to address the complex problems facing contemporary Asia. Currently, more than 20 Rice faculty members are examining the transnational and global dimensions of Asian culture, both past and present.

“One of Professor Barlow’s many strengths is her proven and productive collaboration with leading scholars from around the world,” Leebron said. “She brings to us not only extraordinary scholarly credentials and practical experience, but a large international network of prestigious Asian and Western intellectuals.”

Barlow is well-suited for her new role in the Chao Center. She has worked with leading scholars from around the world in shared scholastic initiatives. Recently, she has been involved with collaborative international research groups “Rethinking 20th-Century Chinese History” and “Textual Translation and Cultural Context: China, Japan and the West,” which aim to produce new insights and scholarship about Asian issues. 

“With this appointment, the Chao Center gains a scholar of penetrating intellect and truly international reputation,” said Rich Smith, the George and Nancy Rupp Professor of Humanities and professor of history. Smith served as the interim director of the center.

Barlow’s special research interest is Chinese women’s history. Her book “The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism” (2004) received rave reviews and became particularly influential in a number of academic disciplines. She is currently writing two books, “In the Event of Women” and “The Intellectual Foundations of Social Sciences in China.”

In addition to her extensive work on women and gender issues, Barlow has researched and written about many China- and Asia-related topics — colonialism, globalization, science, social science, literature, consumerism, advertising and translation. Among the titles of the works she has authored, co-authored, edited or co-edited are “The Modern Girl Around the World,” “The Modern Girl, Colonial Modernity and East Asia,” “New Asian Marxisms” and “Cinema and Desire: Feminist Marxism and Cultural Politics in the Work of Dai Jinhua.”

The Chao Center builds on Rice’s 15-year-old Asian Studies Program, whose faculty members currently offer 40 Asia-oriented courses, confer an undergraduate degree and support a variety of Asia-related activities on campus and in Houston. The center collaborates with various departments, schools, institutes, centers and programs at Rice, including the acclaimed Transnational China Project directed by Steven Lewis, professor of the practice in humanities, as well as with colleges, universities and research centers throughout the world.

Among the goals of the center:

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